


Kingsman Material

by cnomad



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Scene, Squint and Miss It Hartwin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnomad/pseuds/cnomad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Eggsy fails the final test, Harry goes in search of Merlin for some answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingsman Material

"Harry," Merlin said, standing up as the other man walked through the door into his office. "I was expecting you."

"What happened?" he asked, his expression tightly controlled. Merlin could still see his fury behind the masked complacency. "Arthur just told me that Roxy Morton is our new Lancelot." 

Merlin shrugged, "The boy failed the test. That's all there is to it."

He gestured for Harry to sit in his spare chair as he walked over to his bar cart. "Drink?" 

"Please," Harry said, unbuttoning his jacket swiftly and sitting down. "Explain it to me—Eggsy was the best. How could he possibly have failed?" 

Merlin carried the two tumblers over to his desk, handing one to Harry and holding onto the other. He leaned against the edge of his desk, gazing down at Harry's face. A part of him didn't want to have to do this, but there was nothing he could do to stop this conversation from happening.

He sighed. "You shouldn't get too upset. There was nothing you could do to change this outcome; the boy was always going to fail."

Harry's face turned thunderous—an expression Merlin was vastly unfamiliar with when it came to the agent in front of him. Galahad was usually so cool, so collected, no matter what mission he was on, but in this moment he looked unsettled.

"Don't tell me  _you_  believe Arthur's ridiculous trite about Kingsman and the working class. Not you, surely, Merlin."

He gave a dry chuckle, before taking a sip of his drink. "No, nothing like that, I assure you. But that doesn't change the fact that Eggsy was always going to fail that test."

"You keep saying that like it means anything. _Always_. Eggsy was the best of the recruits, he would have made a tremendous agent." Harry turned away from Merlin so that they weren't looking in each other's faces. "He would have made the Kingsmen proud."

"I have no doubt," Merlin agreed. "I've been handling recruitment for some time, Harry. I know how impressive Eggsy was. That doesn't mean I'm wrong though."

The other agent glared at him. "Then explain it to me, please. If you don't believe Arthur in regards to who should and should not qualify for the Kingsmen, and you acknowledge that the boy was one of the best, explain it to me. Why isn't he Lancelot? Why am I having a suit made for him that was supposed to be the first of many but is instead only going to be the one?"

It would be easier, Merlin mused, if Harry were anyone else. The other agents shouted at Merlin when he dismissed one of their recruits. They offered him money and women and fine scotch, knowing of course that he would never accept, but feeling better because they could tell themselves they had actively done something. They would argue that their pick was the top choice, that they had only made a silly mistake, that we all made mistakes. It was always easy to dismiss them, to identify quickly just why their recruits had failed. 

But Harry was right—Eggsy would have been brilliant. And Harry wasn't shouting or bribing or arguing, he was simply...asking. Confused for the first time in his life, he didn't understand how something he'd been so sure of had failed so spectacularly. 

Instead of answering, Merlin mused aloud, "I wonder if it was fair. Inviting him to try out. If maybe things wouldn't have been better if you had left him alone."

"Excuse me?" Harry said, his tone affronted. 

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm not even blaming you. I'm just wondering...if it was fair. Knowing that he wouldn't pass. Knowing that he would fail. Was it fair to show him all of this, knowing he could never have it, but telling him it was within his grasp? It wasn't. It never was." 

Harry's expression darkened, "Merlin, for fucks' sakes, what are you on about? You haven't explained yourself at all! I'm starting to think you  _do_ agree with Arthur's nonsense." 

"Not about the working class in general, no. There are plenty of viable candidates who we've never been allowed to consider because of Arthur's so-called traditions. But about Eggsy, in particular? Yes. Arthur was correct in stipulating that he would never make it." 

Harry put his drink down—Merlin would almost describe it as slamming it down, if Harry weren't so careful with his movements. He stood up quickly and buttoned his jacket.

He was straightening his lapels when he spoke, "I won't stand here and listen to this. I'm going to find Eggsy."

Harry's back was turned when Merlin said, "D'you know why the upperclass do better in our recruitments? Arthur's wrong, it has nothing to do with tradition or their inherent worth. It's something else." 

The other agent turned around, "Then explain it to me."

"They're trained from the moment of their birth, that their desires are tantamount. They're told that their ambition is worthwhile and that they should do anything and everything within their abilities to get what they want."

Merlin held up two fingers, "Look at Rufus and Charlie as prime examples of how this can go badly: Rufus released his shoot too early during the skydiving exercise because he decided his safety was most important—above staying undetected and above being there for Eggsy when they had already detailed a set plan regarding pairing up. Then Charlie was willing to spill everything about the Kingsmen because despite all of our training, he places himself first. Above all else." 

Harry looked ready to roll his eyes like a bratty, bored, school child, but Merlin only smiled at him. 

"Now Roxy—she's the same as you and I. We wanted to be agents. Our desire to be agents trumped our survival instinct when jumping out of those planes, it beat out our fear on those train tracks. And yes, when it came down to it, our dream of being an agent ranked higher than our love of our pups. You were willing to kill Mr. Pickles to get this assignment. You fired the gun and you got to be an agent. And if that gun had been filled with real bullets instead of blanks, you wouldn't have regretted it. Neither would I. Neither would Roxy."

Harry leaned forward, "Eggsy's like us too." 

"No, Harry," Merlin said. "No, he's not."

The other agent groaned, "You sound like Arthur."

"I don't mean to, but it's true nonetheless. You remember, of course, that we have to put the recruits through psych evals?" Merlin waited for the other man to nod before carrying on, "We do it in the second week of training. It helps to know who we're dealing with, what to expect down the line, and it can usually tell me when someone will fail. I won't lie, I was happily surprised that Roxy passed the sky diving training exercise. She expressed a high level of fear in regards to height during her psych eval."

Merlin reached out to touch Harry's shoulder, "I believe she passed thanks to the help of Eggsy. He did a marvelous job out there." 

It was said like a benediction, something soft and gentle that might comfort the man. It was necessary, because Merlin still had more unpleasant things to say.

"I knew by Eggsy's psych eval that he would fail." 

"What?" Harry exclaimed, standing up once again. He didn't bother buttoning his suit this time, or even straightening the creases. He was too appalled. 

Merlin waved for him to sit, "Be quiet. I'm not saying I decided at that moment to fail him, I'm not even saying I knew when he would fail. I had high hopes that he would prove me wrong! And for a time he did. The more tests he passed, the more hope I allowed myself to have. But I still knew that the final test was coming, and I knew that Eggsy would never pass that one." 

"This time, you're going to explain yourself Merlin," Harry said, his voice tight and his hands almost clenched into fists. 

"As you wish," he said. "Eggsy is the child of a broken home. It's not pretty and it's not nice, and maybe I'm generalizing a bit. I'm sure there were good times to be had and some years where things went well, but overall, the quality of his home life drastically changed after his father died. And once his mother remarried, Eggsy was, by definition, living with an abusive stepfather. You know this. You told me about the recording."

Harry nodded, not wanting to think back to the horrid sound of fists hitting flesh. The sound of Eggsy's pained shouts, of his mother's voice begging Dean to stop, of the angry man unwilling to let go. Harry had killed other men for less, and sometimes, when his memory drifted over the Unwin household, he dreamed of killing Dean too. 

"You told me everything, Harry, which is why to be quite honest I was surprised when you chose Eggsy as your recruit. I'm not saying it wasn't predictable. Just that I was still surprised."

Harry fixed his glasses into place, "And why's that?"

"Because Eggsy lives his life trying to protect those weaker than him. Because he dropped out of the marines, despite the fact that he was excelling for the first time in his life—he dropped out because his mother had a black eye and he felt that he had to protect her." 

"You see, Harry," Merlin went on. "That's the difference between Eggsy and Roxy. Eggsy wanted to be a marine. He was good at it, too. The very best in his training at the time, I believe. But he gave it all up so that he could ensure his mother's safety himself. I'm not saying Roxy wouldn't have done something—she, like you and I, would have found another way to handle it. A way that allowed us to keep our dreams and protect our mothers."

Harry was shaking; it was just barely noticeable, but Merlin noticed all the same. He said, "And is that—what? Wrong, somehow, that Eggsy wanted to protect his mother?"

"Of course not. I'm not saying that at all. I'm simply stating a fact: Eggsy could never put someone else, someone innocent—especially someone he loved—in harms way just to get what he wanted. It's not in his nature. Eggsy could never have shot J.B." 

"Is that what you think we ask of our recruits? To be able to harm innocent people we care about?"

Merlin sighed, "It is in part. The final test: are you willing to follow orders no matter what they are? Are you willing to put aside any of your personal feelings in the name of the final goal? Do the ends, really, justify the means? To be a Kingsman agent, you have to believe these things. Eggsy can't."

"He could have, though. If we'd trained him better—if  _I'd_  taught him better."

Harry looked so broken and Merlin wasn't quiet sure what to do. Instead, he said: 

"Did you ever ask him how he got caught with that stolen car in the first place?"

The other agent startled. "No. Why on Earth are you asking me that?"

"I did. I had to for the psych eval."

He said, exasperated, "Merlin, he was driving a car that was not his own backwards through the streets of London while being pursued by the police. It's not surprising that he was caught."

"He also lead those same policeman on a wild chase spanning several kilometers while expertly avoiding any other vehicles. He received perfect marks on his defensive driving test while here. He had to have practiced driving stolen cars quite a bit to get that good. If you'd looked at his records you would have noticed Eggsy has no other grand theft auto charges in his history, which tells you that he hasn't been caught before. But this time he crashed the car quite spectacularly. Curious."

Merlin drained the last dregs of his drink before reaching out to fix Harry's coat. He straightened the lapels and fixed the tie before stepping around to leave. 

Harry's voice called out to him, "So why did he crash, then?"

Merlin was just walking out the door when he answered, "He swerved to avoid hitting a fox in the road."

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me at [my tumblr](http://cinematicnomad.tumblr.com/) where I often post drabbles and other fangirlish things.


End file.
